Chances Are

I downloaded "Wildflower" by Sheryl Crow on iTunes today.

This is the CD that I've been waiting for.

There is one particular song that has been with me for years.

Back in 2002, when I was living at 1201 Race St with Brian, I had purchased the German release of the "Soak Up the Sun" single. The disc came with two versions of "Soak Up the Sun," a song with Sheryl and Stevie Nicks, and this song, "Chances Are."

In June that summer, Colorado experienced one of the worst forest fires in recorded history. The fire, which burned in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest southwest of Denver, consumed 137,70 acres of land.

When the fire started, I was at the Cherry Creek Athletic Club swimming in the outdoor pool. The day started out as a typically gorgeous Colorado summer day, but as I was swimming, the skies started to get red and dark. The air quality was so bad my eyes were burning. September 11, 2001 was still fresh in my mind and the first thing I could conceive of that would have caused such a thing was some sort of bomb or aircraft crash. The sky was black and red. The sun that was shining down on me was gone.

When I got home, I found out a wildfire was burning out of control 50 miles from where I was swimming. Governor Bill Owens was on TV holding a press conference and said "all of Colorado is burning." While this was far from true, it certainly felt like it if you were out and about in Denver on that horrible Sunday. Within the coming days, the fire was so bad ash was falling in my bedroom off Cheesman Park in Denver. I can still see ash floating the the dog's water bowl in our kitchen. The fire was getting so big by this point, people were being asked to evacuate neighborhoods in the very outer southern suburbs of Denver.

One night during the first week of the fire, Brian and I took a drive to Daniels Park in Douglas County to get a look at this fire. Daniels Park is on top of a mesa and you have gorgeous view of the Palmer Divide, Pikes Peak, Devil's Head and the incredible landscape of Douglas County. When I got out of the car, I didn't see the endless sky or the beautiful stars I was used to seeing. I saw hell on earth. The landscape glowed red. Lightning crashed over the flames and illuminated the thick black smoke in front of us.

On the way home, I couldn't help but listen to this song, "Chances Are." The music is what I saw, the music was what I felt. This fire was started not by nature, but by an irresponsible person. I thought about her karma. I thought about the karma of the human race. How can one person cause the destruction of so much beauty in such an instant?

~ We were apes before we spoke of sin
The cosmos sits on the tip of a pin ~

Visions of Johanna

Well its Monday. My day at work sucked, again. But I had lunch with L.S. and I felt better after seeing him. What a pain in the ass.

After work, I had dinner with BJWC. I hadn't seen him in awhile, and it was surprisingly nice to see him again. It felt good to have a familiar experience in a time when lately, those have been hard to come by.

~ Some day he'll find a way to remedy
This lovely mess he's made of you ~

The Broncos are kicking ass against Kansas City right now, so I've changed the channel to the Bob Dylan documentary on PBS.


Can't write now...absorbing Bob.

Please leave all your personal belongings behind

Today I added the airliners.net picture of the day to my blog. If you're reading this on Sunday you'll notice the picture is the AF A340-313X that landed short on the runway, crashed in a ravine, then burst into flames. Another aviation emergency miracle, all 200+ pax were able to evacuate without any fatalities. Amazing.

This weekend was Alvina's much anticipated priate themed birthday party. My name for the evening was Dirty William Flint. Samm and I had fun at the party hanging out with a bunch of Kids from CU, but I think we had more fun dressing up and doing all the shopping leading up to the party itself. The moustache I was wearing was a real hoot. I could make it do funny things since it was basically a stiff piece of hair All my hair lip hijinks kept Hamm in stitches. The glue keeping the thing attached to my lip was making me woozy, but hearing Hamm laugh as hard as she was defintely made me not mind so much.

L.S. Update:

Friday night/Saturday morning I got booty called from Charlie's. I would have gone, but I was feeling tired and I had a good parking place so I didn't go. I don't know how anyone can be unhappy being single. There's nothing to let you down.

Today I've been cleaning and getting ready for my big trip back to Indiana on Wednesday. As I've been working, I've had the song "This One's For the Girls" by Martina McBride in my head. I don't like Martina and I don't like this song. Someone please, please help me.

I did meet a nice boy from Hawaii this afternoon. We chatted for a bit and the joined me on some errands. He's a student at DU. You'd think by now I'd be staying away from anyone under 25, but I guess I'm a sucker for nice people.

Good Is Good

I just saw Sheryl on David Letterman. The crappiness of my day went away when she started to sing. Tim was playing a really cool bass tonight. It had a hollow body and he was finger picking it...sounded low, fuzzy and deep. I really felt it...even over the TV speakers. The best part of the song "Good Is Good" is the guitar riff after the second phrase of the verse. Its so Don Felder 70s cool...

Matt and John are Indy now. They were on UA1170. The a/c was a 735 in case anyone is wondering. They're going to have an awesome vacation. Love is a good thing.

Now my visions of Johanna are conquering my mind.

If we could live in a world without tears...
How would blood know the body to flow outside of?
How would bullets find the gun?

New tonight:

L.S. was evicted from his apt today. His ass is hot, but this shit is really getting out of hand...

I'm newly infatuated with Ryan Cabrera. If you go to his website there's a little video where he says he'll go buy his new record with you and after that he'll have a "hang out session" with you. I can think of another kind of session I'd like to have with R.C. But, that's neither here nor there...

I Know Him So Well from Chess just came on my iTunes playlist. *sniff*

The Click Five wins my award for best hair and music. Way to go with the 60s harmonies. This is my kind of boy band. Oh yeah, the lead guitar player is from Denver and the lead singer and drummer are from Indy. Furthermore, I saw them perfom live on TV and they sounded great!! Better, in fact, than they do on their recordings. No wonder I like these guys.

I love Jimmy

I just went to Jimmy John's for lunch with Kevin. We had Jimmy John's back in Bloomington and now they've started to pop up in the Denver metro area. The bread is sooo good and they have the best mayo. I strongly suggest you eat there if you are in the mood for a sub.

B6292

Tonight on my way home from work, Dan Capils mentioned a cable news channel was showing a jet circling LAX in preparation for an emergency landing. Apparently I'm a well known aviation enthusiast among my friends (duh), because I received phone calls or text messages from three such wonderful friends who also were alerting me to this situation. After awhile I learned the aircraft in question was N536JB, an Airbus A320-232, operating as JetBlue (B6) flight 292. Hamm and I were scheduled to have Pho and Boba night, but we were too glued to the coverage of this potentially horrible situation unfolding on the cable news networks to get our butts moving. We stayed home long enough to see the pilot make an amazingly smooth landing despite the nose gear wearing down and burning off as the jet rolled down the runway. Both of us were overjoyed to see there were no further problems and all 140 passengers and 6 crew were all able to deplane down air stairs rather than jumping out of the emergency slides.

Fox News had pretty good coverage of this right up until the point when the a/c was vectored for their final approach by ATC. This just happened to coincide with the start of Hannity and Colmes. These guys drive me nuts, especially Sean. If you think he doesn't know anything about politics, you should have heard him try to talk about commercial aviation. With people like him spewing their "intellect" across the airwaves, its no wonder I'm inundated on a daily basis with dumbasses who think their regurgitated news commentator talking point is going to impress me. They all need to be put out of their misery. Anyway, CNN and the always avuncular Larry King had way better coverage by this time. Larry had Captian Al Haynes on the phone who was the pilot of UA232 that crashed in Souix City, Iowa enroute from DEN (Stapleton!) to ORD on July 19, 1989. Captain Haynes is credited with saving 185 of the 295 lives aboard by piloting the DC-10-10 without the control of most of his flight surfaces. I can't imagine being one these passengers knowing they may be dead in a matter of minutes. I'm sure many of the pax aboard B6292 felt the same today.

After we realized all was well with the troubled aircraft we headed for Pho. It was about 7:45 by this time so we wouldn't have made it to our usual Pho at Pho Hoang Hau (they close at 8) so we tried a new place, Pho Duy. I think we liked Pho Duy better...more people were eating there, the prices were cheaper, and the food seemed to be better. Oh yeah, and they're open past 8 pm.

Once we got to Boba, Hamm-Hikle Foosball Death Match 2005 was back on. I have been wiping the floor with Hamm the past few times we've played, but she came out strong this time. I think it was the three color jellies in the bottom of her hot tea. Her rally didn't last long, though. I came back with a vengance...so much so, in fact, the Foosball ball went flying off the table several times. I ended up winning again. We'll see what happens in the next round. I'll keep you posted.

Good PennMann-ship

Tonight I had dinner with my most excellent friend Matt at Chili's in Westminster. While I was scarfing down chips and salsa I heard, to my very pleasant surprise, "No Myth" by the talented Michael Penn followed by "Going Through the Motions" by the lovely and talented Aimee Mann. I couldn't help but think this must be the work of a Chili's music programmer with as good of taste in music and a streak for mischief like I have. My burger tasted so much better.

Speaking of music, I think my ear for music has really improved lately. On the way home tonight, I was listening to Patti Scialfa for the first time in a few months and totally pulled this harmony out of my ass on "Stand Up." I have no idea if it really sounded good or if I'm one of those people that thinks they sound great but really sound worse than a cat having sex in an alley. I'm guessing I'm not that bad because I wrote a song last night! It really came out of nowhere...I was just noodling around and found some chords and got an idea. There are no words, but the music is there. Its just me and my little Casio keyboard, but the song has a great feel. Its kind of a happy rolling rock song in the style of "You Make Loving Fun" (the clavinet + wah on that song has always been one of my main reasons for living) or "Angel" by Fleetwood Mac crossed with the bridge from the song "Some Dreams Come True" with a twist of the middle part of "Waiting for You" by the Bangles. I can hear the harmonies and the clavinet each time I play it. Now I just need a band and a Rhodes piano and I'll be all set.

In other news, I spent last night with L.S. so I'm tired today. The answer to your question is yes, but mostly because the kid snores like a broken down piece of machinery and has a bed that is about as comfortable as laying on warm Jello.

Anyway....

What say you, "liberals"?

This New Orleans crisis has brought so much bull crap to light its not even funny. I could devote an entire essay to what I think about the situation, but that's not the point of this entry.

I have a lot of "liberal" friends who place every single one of the horrible consequences of Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing levee breach in New Orleans squarely on the shoulders of one person, President George W. Bush. Not only do I find this to be ridiculous, but I find it to be intellectually dishonest when presented with all the facts and back story surrounding this horrible tragedy. Any reasonable person can see that there is plenty of blame to go around and nobody is going to get out of this thing without a scratch.

The biggest gripe I hear, in between the sips of Kool Aid, is how the Bush administration and FEMA didn't do enough to a.) evacuate people before the storm hit and b.) respond fast enough to all the stranded residents. I was told the local government in New Orleans or the state of Louisana basically asked for help and were rebuffed by the feds and, if a Democrat had been in the White House, that wouldn't have happened. Please. Now it turns out the Democrat mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, is calling for people to come back into the city amid objections from the administration that apparently was incapble of managing this crisis in the first place.

So let's say the residents of New Orleans do return and the tens of thousands of people predicted to have been dead do start dying, not from the flood, but due to lack of clean drinking water, toxic muck in their back yard, and unhealthy contaminants flying through the air? Whose fault will it be that these people were back in the city so soon? I think I know the answer.

Jesus, you people drive me nuts.

Blame it on the train...but the idiots are already there

Its Monday, yeah! I had a pretty good weekend. I saw The Exorcisim of Emily Rose. I really liked this movie because it wasn't gross scary, just good old fashioned freaky scary. You know, bloody eyes, demon ghost faces, black hooded figures, lightning, black cats...all that jazz. That was on Saturday...Sunday I spent the day with Matt and John watching football. We wanted to watch the Colts, but they weren't on here in Denver. Instead we watched Carolina and New England. The Patriots drive me nuts so I was glad to see Carolina win. After that, our beloved Denver Broncos took the field and won against San Diego (barely) thanks to a 25 yard interception in the 3rd quarter by Champ Bailey. You can read the rest of highlights somewhere else. I love football season.

Speaking of the Broncos, can anyone tell me what's up with Jake Plummer? The picture here is Jake in better days. Now he looks like a 70s porn star with that little moustache and long hair. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I couldn't find a picture of his new nappiness. He's a good looking guy so I'm not sure what his problem is. If the Broncos don't win by a bigger margin next time, I'm taking a razor down to Invesco to nip this thing in the bud.

Later in the evening I had special be-fri-st-end night with Hamm. We did our usual night of Pho on Federal then Boba at Lollicup on Colorado Blvd. I had ginger milk tea this time...interesting...spicy.

September Saturday

Ah, Saturday. I love having one day of nothing to do. The biggest crisis is how late to get up, or when to work out, or how many times to play with the dog...

Today was just such a day...I did clean up the house which made me feel productive.

The first signs of fall are beginning to be seen in the mile high city. The air feels a bit more crisp, the sun is lower in the sky, and a few leaves have already started to turn. I love fall in Denver...I love fall in Indiana, my home state, as well. I'm going there in a week and its going to be great.

Joe Dickhead and the Professor

My usual Friday night consists of the following:

1. Dinner with O'Reilly

2. Several rum and cokes

3. Colorado Inside Out. This is one of the best shows on TV. Its a local roundtable discussion show that focuses on local and national issues. The show is hosted by Peter Boyles of KHOW radio and features input from Patricia Calhoun of Westword, Craig Silverman former Denver prosecutor and current talk show personality on KHOW radio, David Kopel of the Independence Institute, and Dani Newsum general liberal shill and the one liberal that whips me into submission every time I hear her speak. Dani was really getting beat up tonight because she noticed a bust of Andrew Jackson behind President Bush during his speech last night. No one was conceding her point that black Americans may have a different view of history given what has happened to them over the years. Her point was well received by me. Peter always ends the show by having the panelists put forth their disgrace of the week, then by having them say something nice about someone. One of the substitue panelists, Eric Sondermann, used Andrew Jackson as his "something nice about someone" for being a symbol of strength and some other crap which I thought was dirty pool. Poor Dani kept her composure but I still felt bad. I can't believe that so called white male intellecutals won't concede that a black female may view things differently than they would.

4. Independent Thinking, hosted by Jon Caldara. I missed this tonight because Matt called me and invited me to the Wrangler for drinks with Juan and their friend Steve. I'm almost always up for booze and friends so I passed on II and walked to the Wrangler. On my way out I saw my very cute neighbor, Derrick. He and I have a special relationship. I think we should be friends or hang out more mainly because he's hot and I'm fabulous. In any case I'd like to get my hands on....well never mind.

Now I'm watching Phil's webcast and thinking about going to bed soon. The Loaf is snoring with the tennis ball in his mouth. Life is so fucking good.

I get nervous, over anxious, lose control, oh...
Waiting for you, baby....

Hard to make a stand...

I think the song "Hard to Make a Stand" from Sheryl Crow's eponymous album is just about one of my most favorite songs ever.

Let's run down why its cool:

1. The lyrics...make me think of L.A. in the 1960s. I know, I wasn't born yet and I've never been to L.A., but I'm going to say that anyway.
2. The arrangement: The guitar rocks, the bass has the most awesome fuzz sound on it. When I was little, my uncle Bud had an old organ. The low notes on the pedals generated this really rich, fuzzy bass sound. This song reminds me of that. The organ is sublime. The acoustic guitar gives the brightest highlights.
3. The song reminds me of fall my freshman year at IU. I have a lot of good memories of that time...making new friends and new experiences and discovering the beauty of the Hoosier state.
4. The outro: Its only 30 seconds of music, but I could listen to it all day long.
5. I can't put into words how this song makes me feel...its that good.

We've got loud guitars and big suspicions
Great big guns and small ambitions
And we still argue over who is God...

And I say, Hey there miscreation
Bring a flower time is wastin'
And I say, Hey there miscreation
We all need a celebration...

BuRP

I just finished the rest of Hamm's breakfast burrito from last night's trip to Jack 'n Grill. The burrito was about 7lbs when it started and she managed to get it down to about 4. I better go for a walk right now...What if the green chili eats through my insides and opens up a hole in the middle of my stomach? I'll just be a dead body laying on the side of the office park road. These people wouldn't even blink. Tell my friends, family and Mr Tripp that I love them :'(

Goodly

I've always been amazed at the power of my own brain. It seems like a simple thought can snowball into a complete way of life. Consequenly, I think this september boy has got it bad.

Nothing is ever as bad as it seems.

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